> You mean their Intel's switch from RAM to CPUs?
Yes, and, like you, I think Uber & Lyft are wasting money in the wrong problem while the innovation landscape is quickly changing towards self-driving things.
Yes, and, like you, I think Uber & Lyft are wasting money in the wrong problem while the innovation landscape is quickly changing towards self-driving things.
This is a common misconception. Uber poached several engineers from NREC, which technically belongs to CMU, but for all practical purposes is an independent entity. And of their original ~40 engineers, not many had any real previous experience on self-driving cars. Almost all of the engineers from the DARPA Grand/Urban Challenges had already left (many went to Google). NREC had nothing to do with any of those competitions.
So what happened to CMU's self-driving car research department? Well, initially it was funded by GM. But it spun off into a company called Ottomatika which was later acquired by Delphi.
Uber hired a bunch of great roboticists. They didn't hire a team that had any real experience with self-driving cars.
Self-driving things are being built everywhere, so I don't see the competitive advantage they have in AI because they built an app to get a car! Two very different things.